Can we really separate art from artist?

Christopher Borrelli

Somehow, someway, if you could know of all the ugly moments, questionable acts and transgressions (both large and small) committed by everyone who has ever written a novel, painted a masterpiece, conducted an orchestra or starred in an Oscar-winning performance, would you ever read, look at or listen to anything again?

Could you enjoy another movie? See another concert? Or would that grim knowledge of how those artists conducted their lives — and how misguided, reprehensible or simply callous they could behave — damage your ability to see their works for what they are? Would the moral lapses of everyday life dictate how you regarded the morality of their art? Of course, these are old, complex questions: Can we ever separate the art from the artist? Can we judge a body of work by examining the decency of the person who made it? Or should we?

But I ask because in the past few days there have been three prominent reasons to wonder, two more gravely unnerving than the third. On Saturday, Dylan Farrow posted an open letter on the blog of New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof accusing her adoptive father, filmmaker Woody Allen, in disturbing, explicit detail, of molesting her 22 years ago. Early Sunday we learned that actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, our uber-portrait of accomplished and intelligent contemporary American acting, died of an apparent heroin overdose. Then, later that night, albeit far less serious than the other two events, Bob Dylan was seen in a Super Bowl commercial, shilling this time not for women's underwear but for an automaker, Chrysler.

None of these moments are equal, and none, to anyone who pays attention to the news, should have come as a surprise. Allen has been denying accusations of child molestation for more than 20 years; Dylan, whose ad would have been an act of cultural treason at a different time, has done TV spots for a while; even Hoffman had told several interviewers about his decades-old struggle with heroin and alcohol addiction.

And yet, I ask. Because when I heard about Hoffman's death, instead of replaying a mental reel of great performances, the first images to enter my head were from his personal life. The first I actually witnessed; it happened last fall. I was in the West Village in New York City, leaving a bookstore, when the actor sailed past on his bicycle. He did not run over my toes or maneuver too close. He stood up on his pedals and glided around a double-parked car, his T-shirt baggy and casual, his face red, contented and focused.

He seemed good.

The other image that entered my brain came from early accounts of Hoffman's death: Like lurid detail in a cheap thriller, news reports described Hoffman on the bathroom floor of his apartment, a syringe still stuck in his arm.

That's hard to shake.

I like to believe I can separate the art from the artist, and yet, when I come across Hoffman on television now — or in the next "Hunger Games" movies, both of which will feature him — will I flinch at the sight of his face? Read more into it than is there? Become judgmental, picturing the three young children that he left behind? Or feel more empathy than anger? As reasonable and rooted as Hoffman appeared to be — that rare actor who never seemed eager to leaven his more considered work with lightweight blockbusters — as much as I hate to admit it: It will be hard to look at him again without looking for a hint of self-delusion.

I had never thought much of it, but among his biggest roles for their contributions to music and film, in retrospect, were men whose self-delusion gets them through the day (Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman" on Broadway) or drives them to become iconoclasts ("The Master"). Or serves to create art itself: Hoffman's most famous role, his Oscar-winning turn as Truman Capote, is a portrait of a writer who mines from the lives of criminals, finishes a masterpiece ("In Cold Blood"), then convinces himself that the moral lapses it took to write it were justified by its brilliance.

Eventually, however, that unsavory prism, that feeling of seeing an artist's life reflected in work, can pass.

Or never stick at all, regardless of the seriousness of the transgression: Does anyone still conflate the 51-year-old Matthew Broderick with the 25-year-old actor who, in the late 1980s, while driving through Northern Ireland unintentionally crossed his BMW into the wrong lane and killed a mother and daughter (later convicted of careless driving and fined $175)? When you hear Jay Z rap about fashion now, do you picture a guy who once pleaded guilty to stabbing a producer? Time matters.

On the other hand, Jerry Lee Lewis and Roman Polanski will always be as remembered for their contributions to music and film as for accusations of sexual indiscretion.

Same with Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, Allen, all of whom have faced similar accusations involving sex with children, suggesting here is the line many audiences will not cross when it comes to separating an artist from his art. Time doesn't always matter. Indeed, probably most of us know someone who, even long after Allen's 1997 marriage to Soon-Yi Previn (the adopted daughter of Allen's longtime partner Mia Farrow), has refused to give credibility to (or just watch) Allen's late-career highlights, namely "Match Point," "Midnight in Paris" and the current Oscar nominee "Blue Jasmine." Nothing Allen makes, or made, has any validity. Every ticket bought is an endorsement.

More pointedly, in that letter from Dylan Farrow, she accuses the Golden Globes of willfully ignoring the alleged behavior of Allen and instead honoring him with a recent lifetime achievement award; Kristof also writes that the Globes "sided with Allen, in effect accusing Dylan either of lying or not mattering."

But are lifetime achievement awards generally handed out to honor a body of work or an artist's life?

I am not defending Allen but rather underlining how, ultimately, it's the work itself that matters, the work itself that lasts. Which will sound naive to some. As will this: Hoffman will be regarded as one of the most durable, defining actors of his generation, and not as an addict. Bob Dylan will not be remembered for endorsing a mammoth corporation, seeming to renege on the ideals of a generation that he himself helped to install.

And so, Allen will be remembered, one day, as just a great filmmaker. Because once you remove the noise and the accusations (both true and false), when you simply watch a Woody Allen movie — or listen to Bob Dylan or catch a Philip Seymour Hoffman movie — you are not endorsing the life of the person who created that art. You are not voting for a humanitarian award. Just as watching David Letterman every night or listening to "Layla" (which is partly about Eric Clapton's feverish love for George Harrison's then-wife) is not the same as condoning marital infidelity. Just as reading Ernest Hemingway is not the same as agreeing with his bullying, brutish life choices. Because the lives of these artists are not their work, and their work is not their lives. Not entirely.

Perhaps it's just a lie I tell myself. But it's a necessary lie; otherwise, once the background checks are finished, the brevity of the list of acceptable art by acceptable artists would be another crime.